US didn't seem to suffer a similar brain drain after the 2016 elections The trade war between US and China didn't start until recently. I don't think we'll see the consequence until next year.

@scaaahu I was referring to the people who said they'd leave the US if Trump won. It didn't seem to happen, e.g. theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/22/…

A "brain drain" takes a while to become evident. People aren't going to leave immediately. You may just discover that over time it becomes harder to get international students and faculty to come. I, for one, feel less inclined to move to the UK due to Brexit.

So have you surveyed the scientists or are you relying on possibly biased journalists?

"Five years in the future they should be resolved"... haha, no. We are supposed to leave in March next year. Two years after the referendum and there is still no plan. At all. The fallout from Brexit (if it happens) will take far longer than five years to resolve. If we leave wih no trade deal it'll be WW2 style rationing before long. Science funding is not a priority.

I think it will be very difficult to give an objective answer to this, as the effect of Brexit on the future is a topic of intense political debate and uncertainty.

@Thomas but if there's no underlying reason I would expect scientist to be split roughly 50% in favor and 50% opposed (?)

It is actually a positive for UK science since it will be kept under common science and innovation strategies of EU, and now UK can focus on their own citizens. I saw the wording in job annocment change dramatically,

US didn't seem to suffer a similar brain drain after the 2016 elections, my Iranian friends are certainly happy to have moved back to Sweden.

@Allure I have heard that at every election, than 99% of people stick around. Lives go on mostly as usual...

@gerrit that's the thing though, there are people leaving but the numbers are comparatively few. I personally declined an opportunity to move to the UK because of the referendum; however there's no apparent lack of people willing to take up the opportunity I declined. If that's the case it's hard for me to see it as a real brain drain.

@Allure A brain drain need not be in numbers but in quality. Just because there are still people willing to move to the UK to do research, this does not necessarily mean that the quality of the pool of applicants might not be drastically reduced (this could even happen without making it smaller, since less qualified people might take this opportunity to apply places they would not have bothered with before because they would have had no chance). But this is all just speculation and I know of no hard data one way or the other.

@TobiasKildetoft yes, I'll start another question to ask for data (did Brexit make it significantly easier to land a professorship in the UK? - something like that).

But since the UK pays the EU more than it receives in benefits... - as they would say on Wikipedia: [citation needed]. Are there any real data that show how much Brexit will save/cost you (as opposed to made up numbers like £350m per week)? Also, benefits must not always be monetary, e.g. a large amount can be saved if EMA handles the drug approvals instead of the UK having to run their own Medical Safety Agency. What about the jobs lost now that EMA moves from London to Amsterdam, are these included in the real costs?

I certainly saw a wave of physicists leave the USA after the Freedom Fries debacle. It took a couple of years as e.g. the visa restrictions didn't change immediately (I suddenly had to log it every time I went to see my parents !) and people needed some time to look for jobs, but as far as I can tell, none of these people ever came back.

Very concretely, it is now much harder to get top-class people to apply for positions on various levels. I do not think that this is comparable with the US, because the US is a much bigger place, and with a larger buffer. In the UK, the effect is quite visible outside of the top tier universities, with (anecdotically) positions not attracting the same level of quality as before anymore.

I remember working on the Meteosat second generation weather satellites. The development team was scattered all over the place. Germany, UK, Czech Rep, etc etc. There were hundreds of people working on this thing. Major science projects and research just work like that. It is easier to get funded if you have access to a diverse set of resources.

To circumvent hundreds of different threads of speculation, we can of course look at a real-life example. How far are Switzerland and Norway lagging behind the EU-countries? Britain will probably have a similar position.

@Geliormth Not sure why you assume that. It is much harder to negotiate good deals when you are the one leaving, and change tends to make things harder as well. Plus of course, the UK does not have the banking sector of Switzerland or the oil of Norway.

"but if there's no underlying reason I would expect scientist to be split roughly 50% in favor and 50% opposed (?)" - excuse me, but what kind of statistical training/education leads you to this interpretation of the referendum result? The length and tone of your post, coupled with the fact that you are not in the UK at present (and not from the UK?) leaves an impression that you want academia.SE to provide you with an education about UK politics/culture and academia, which I fear is beyond the scope of the site and expertise of participants

'It could be that the UK does not actually redirect the money, but that would be because the UK as a whole decided that science isn't worth it, in which case it would be democracy in action and one can't really complain." This is staggeringly naive (or, worse, specious) as a view of how policies get enacted in democracies. If you had sat through the months leading up to the referendum, you might notice that the demos can easily be persuaded to cast votes which they think are for [vague thing X] which will have [concrete effect Y that they don't know about]

@YemonChoi If scientists split between supporting and opposing Brexit by random chance then we expect a rough 50-50 split, no? If scientists are almost unanimously opposed to Brexit, that indicates there's an underlying reason.

As for policies in democracies - we're veering into personal values here. Personally, I believe that it's still a free vote, and if people can be persuaded to vote for something that's self-injurious, then we get what we deserve. Please don't say it's naive - I lived for years in a country which perpetually voted for a government so clearly kleptocratic that international observers were baffled.

@Allure Assuming all outcomes to be equally probable is not a tenable position, because it swiftly leads to contradictory results. e.g.: if we categorise possible outcomes as "leave" and "remain", we get your 50-50 split. But if we categorise them as "hard Brexit", "soft Brexit", and "remain", the same logic predicts 67% support for some variety of Leave. And if we consider 99 different Brexit scenarios vs. just one Remain, we get 99% support for Brexit, etc. etc.

@Allure but why are you thinking Brexit is self injurous?

"the UK pays the EU more than it receives in benefits". Citation needed.

I think the question ignores the effect of uncertainty. Suppose you are 90% confident that Brexit will be OK for academia — EU research funding will be maintained or replaced and it will be easy for EU citizens to work in the UK. (I think it’s much more likely to be a disaster, but let’s be optimistic.) Would you accept even a 10% risk if you didn’t already have ties to the UK? All else being equal, you might prefer to move to Canada. Anecdotally UK universities are already struggling to get the best international students, postdocs, and faculty due to the long term uncertainty they face.

You should also consider that Free Movement was a big advantage of the UK for EU academics compared to the US. Top people will nearly always have multiple options and will be able to get a visa nearly everywhere. But if you have multiple good offers, you might go where no visa is required and their spouse is allowed to stay and work as well and they can easily switch to an industry job without any complicated visa change process.

@SSimon I don't think I know enough personally to say whether Brexit is self-injurious. I believe it because it's what experts have said, and I used that term because I don't see how Yemon Choi's comment makes sense if he didn't think Brexit is self-injurious.

@GeoffreyBrent but then if there're many varieties of leave and only one remain scenario, then we would expect >50% support for leave, and the opposite is true (?)

@Thomas are you are liberty to give more details? If so can you write an answer in the companion question? academia.stackexchange.com/questions/114148/…

@GeorgPatscheider it's reasonably easy to Google for, e.g. fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million and references therein. It's possible that the factors you mention mitigate the gap somewhat, but with the gap as big as it is it's hard for me to imagine that it is completely mitigated. Besides, the UK is one of the bigger & richer countries in the EU, so it's only sensible that it contributes more to the EU than it receives.

@CaptainEmacs what do you mean by "larger buffer"? Also, are you at liberty to give more details for how top-class people are discouraged from applying? If so can you write an answer in the other question?

@Allure further evidence for the proposition that "assume all outcomes equally probable" isn't a useful line of argument in this sort of discussion.